~ Posted retroactively ~ 

My third interview was with Ms. Haiyoung Yun, Class of 1993. While we were unfortunately unable to lock in a time for both of us to meet, I was able to conduct a very in-depth written interview with her discussing localizations of international work culture.

Following her graduation, Ms. Yun pursued her MSC in Public Policy at The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). In her last summer there, she interned with the Korea Development Institute (KDI), and following her graduation she was offered a full-time position at KDI’s School of Public Policy and Management. Since then, Ms. Yun has moved in and out of KDI around four times for a variety of reasons, both personal and professional. Currently, however, she is back with the Institute serving as the Managing Director of their International Cooperation and Capacity Building Department. Her work involves managing short-term training programs for public officials from across the globe and debriefing them on Korea’s development exercises. 

One of the questions I asked Ms. Yun was on differences between work cultures that she has observed between Korea and the U.S. In her opinion, the work culture between a domestic Korean company and a U.S.-based subsidiary of the company was effectively the same. Particularly in her starting position and office with KDI, staff reports to Seoul headquarters despite physically being located in a totally different country. The international supervision and delegation of duties, she felt, made it so that the vertical structure so commonplace in Korean companies transferred itself to the U.S. location. Lines between personal and professional lives were blurred, the hours unpredictable, and executives often stayed late–trends that all resemble Korean work culture rather closely. 

I found it somewhat surprising Ms. Yun was recounting an environment where even in a completely foreign country, Korean social norms regarding work etiquette still found a way to take root! It was particularly interesting to me since my hosting company from the winter, the SFG Global Business Group, reported the exact opposite when it came to discussing the U.S. subsidiary and its work culture there. I think it also brings up the question of whether U.S.- or Korean-style work culture is more preferable. It’s certainly a complicated question, and one that truly has no right answer, but I think it’s important to identify the pros and cons of both. Ms. Yun was really insightful with her remarks on leveraging cultural capital–or building up cultural capital, in the case of employees recruited from overseas–to successfully navigate both types of environments. It’s something I’ll definitely have to think about as I consider what I want to do following graduation! 

I’ll sign off here for now~ I hope you all continue to enjoy reading this blog!